Trump bowing to the NRA and refusing to support background checks could be a death blow to the GOP winning back suburban women

Protesters hold signs calling for more gun controls at a rally three days after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, U.S., February 17, 2018.Jonathan Drake/Reuters

In the wake of two deadly mass shootings,
President Donald Trump succumbed to pressure from the gun
lobby and declined to support legislation for stronger
background checks on gun sales.

House Democrats are making big electoral gains in suburban
areas, where voters overwhelmingly support greater restrictions
on guns.

Recent polling from Politico/Morning Consult and the
Republican Main Street Partnership show overwhelming support for
stricter gun laws among Republican women, too - a huge warning
sign for the GOP.

In one poll conducted after the El Paso and Dayton shootings,
71% of suburban voters and 64% of Republican women backed banning
assault-style weapons.

In the wake of two deadly mass shootings that killed 31 people
and injured dozens of others in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio
in early August, members of Congress from both parties pushed for
new federal gun safety laws, including expanded background
checks.

Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Democratic
Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia both lobbied the president
and his aides to support their bipartisan amendment that would
extend mandatory federal background checks to private firearms
sales at gun shows and transactions over the Internet.

In this case, a similar pattern played out: Trump expressed vague
public support for more background checks, the powerful National
Rifle Association called him and convinced him not to back any
more gun safety measures, and Trump relented for the moment,
virtually eliminating the chances of any bipartisan gun reform
bill making it through Congress.

According
to a recent report in The Atlantic, Trump and his daughter,
White House advisor Ivanka Trump, had a vision of a historic Rose
Garden ceremony to sign a background checks bill into law. But
NRA chief Wayne LaPierre promptly threw cold water on the idea,
talking Trump out of the idea when LaPierre called him to discuss
it.

Trump may have placated the NRA for now. But the failure of the
Trump administration and congressional Republicans to
meaningfully address gun violence could constitute a fatal death
blow to their 2020 electoral chances to win back suburban voters
and especially suburban women, a crucial segment of the
electorate where Democrats are gaining ground.

Democrats are making headway and overtaking Republicans in
suburban districts

In 2018, Democratic challengers flipped 40 seats in the House of
Representatives largely by winning over college-educated suburban
voters,
according to data compiled by CityLab, which found that 22 of
the 40 flipped districts were located in dense suburban or
sparse-suburban districts.

The Democratic wave is rapidly transforming places like the
formally Republican stronghold of Orange County in Southern
California, where Democrats pulled off the once-thinkable goal of
winning back four GOP-controlled seats in 2018.

And in August of 2019, the Orange County Democratic Party
announced that registered Democrats now outnumber registered
Republicans in the area, a striking development in an area that
has been dubbed "Reagan country" for decades.

The Cook Political Report's Dave Wasserman noted that when
Democrats held the House majority in 2007, they held 233
seats that represented 32% of America's total land area. They
currently hold almost the same number of seats, but they cover
just 20% of the US' total landmass.

Election analyst Amy Walter, also
of the Cook Political Report, wrote that "the collapse
of GOP in suburbs has been remarkable," adding that for many
suburban voters, "the 'good economy' isn't enough to overcome the
dislike these voters have for Trump's rhetoric & behavior.
And, the shootings in Dayton/El Paso only help make [the
Democrats'] case that the country can't afford 4 more years of
this kind of divisiveness."

Republicans too are sounding the alarm about Democrats'
surge in the suburbs - especially after nine Republican House
representatives all decided to call it quits and decline to run
for re-election.

In July alone, four members of Texas' Republican congressional
delegation announced they do not plan to run for re-election in
2020, almost a year after Democrats came within striking distance
of beating Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, and after they flipped two
suburban districts in Houston and Dallas in 2018.

Three of the Texas representatives, Reps. Kenny Marchant, Pete
Olson, and Will Hurd, represent majority-nonwhite and suburban
districts that have been trending Democratic over the past
several years, giving Democrats renewed hope of flipping those
seats and putting Republicans on notice.

Matt Mackowiak, the chairman of the Travis County GOP which
covers the city of Austin, begged
his fellow Republicans to not to retire, tweeting on August
3, "I don't know who needs to hear this. But enough goddamn GOP
congressional retirements. Every retirement threatens GOP's
chance to take back the majority," imploring members of Congress
to "suck it up. Win your re-elect. Fight socialism. Don't
quit."

Rep. Will Hurd was one of four Texas Republicans to retire in 2019, putting his district in reach for Democrats.Reuters/Erin Scott

Gun restrictions are popular among the suburban voters who are
rapidly fleeing the GOP

There's a mounting amount of evidence that gun control will be a
top priority for voters in GOP-represented suburban districts in
areas of Arizona and Texas, which Democrats hope to flip blue.

And as
Bloomberg's Sahil Kapur recently reported, exit polling from
the 2018 midterms shows that gun reform was among the top five
electoral priorities for all voters, and those who supported gun
control measures backed Democrats 76% to 22%.

And even more recent national polling
from Politico and Morning Consult conducted from August 5-7
after the El Paso and Dayton shootings shows majority support for
stricter gun laws among suburban voters and especially among GOP
women - a huge warning sign for Republicans:

75% of suburban voters supported stricter gun laws, as do 55%
of those who voted for a Republican in 2018 and 59% of Republican
women.

91% of suburban voters and 93% of Republican women supported
background checks on all gun sales.

Importantly, Republicans are already at a disadvantage among
female voters in those districts. The RMPS/Public Opinion
Strategies poll found that not only is Trump's approval rating
underwater among those voters, but 51% already lean towards the
generic Democratic candidate in their district compared to 33%
who lean towards the generic Republican.

The survey further confirmed that stopping gun violence will be
one of the main issues driving suburban women in swing districts.

It found that 30% of all women and 38% of independent women said
working to prevent gun violence was their top priority in the
next election, and 60% of respondents said they would be "more
likely" to support a Republican congressional candidate who
supported the aforementioned gun proposals.

Impactful gun control legislation is unlikely to pass through a
GOP Senate

While the issue of gun violence might help Democrats gain even
more seats in the House of Representatives, any gun control
legislation has close to a zero percent chance of passing as long
as the GOP holds the Senate, which they currently control by a
margin of 53 to 47 seats after expanding their lead in 2018.

In February, the House of Representatives passed two bills which
aim to strengthen background checks - one which would close the
so-called "gun show loophole" by requiring background checks on
all private gun sales, and another which would extend the
required amount of time to process a background check.

While some Republican members of Congress like Sen. Lindsey
Graham of South Carolina and Rep. Adam Kirzinger of Illinois
spoke out in support of some gun restrictions after the two
shootings, Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has not brought
either of the House-approved background check bills to the floor
of the Senate.

With McConnell cultivating a "legislative graveyard" in the
chamber, Democrats' best chances of passing ambitious gun reform
legislation are to win back both the presidency and the US
Senate.

While it's too early to definitively rule anything out, flipping
back control of the Senate would be a heavy lift for Democrats.

It would most likely require Democratic Sen. Doug Jones being
re-elected in Alabama, and also winning the seats currently held
by Republicans in Colorado, Arizona, and Maine as well as an
additional seat in either North Carolina, Iowa or Texas.